


Pretty Good

by Felloffalot



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, High School, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 05:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19126021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felloffalot/pseuds/Felloffalot
Summary: Maria was a cynical young woman who found little to love about life - but maybe she could learn a thing or two from a boy who had hope despite the odds.





	Pretty Good

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this for a Creative Writing class during my Fall 2018 semester in college. It's been collecting dust in my hard-drive ever since, so I figured I might as well post it here.

            "Excuse me, Miss Hawkins," said some old, fat, white guy teacher. "I have a favor to ask of you." Of course he wants something. They only use her last name if they want something.

            "Yes?" Maria said.

            "There is a boy I would like you to tutor," the teacher said. "His name is Sam Conners. His grades aren't terrible, but they could be much better, and I think you could bring out his potential." Ah, of course. Teachers can't do their own damn jobs, so they gotta rely on her instead. Typical.

            "Of course," Maria said. "I would be happy to." That's a lie, of course. It's all a lie. Her smile? A lie. Her straight hair? A lie - it's naturally curly. Her pretending like she even needs to be here when she's probably smarter than half of the teachers? The biggest lie of them all.

            "Wonderful," the teacher said. "Meet him after school in the library on Tuesday. I hope you two will work well together."

            "I'm sure we will," Maria said. But that, too, was a lie.

            Sam Conners. The name seemed oddly familiar, but even as Maria racked her brain waiting at the table in that quiet school library for him to show up, she couldn't remember ever meeting a "Sam Conners" in his life. Had she perhaps seen a report in the news about him committing some dastardly crime? She couldn't be associated with a criminal. It would ruin her reputation. Just as she considered jumping ship before some gangly freak with eighteen tattoos showed up, a voice called out to her.

            "Excuse me," the voice said. "You're Maria Hawkins, right?"

            When Maria looked up to her right to look at the source of her voice, something clicked in her head. Ah. It was _that_ Sam Conners. That disheveled, messy black hair, those thick-rim glasses that barely hid the bags under his eyes, the stain-ridden clothing full of tears and holes, the resting bitch face so strong that he would look sad even if he had just won the lottery - there was no mistaking him. It was the very Sam Conners who had that huge pity parade thrown for him back in middle school after his father died. Her signing that letter the class wrote to him was a lie too. She didn't care about his dead dad.

            "Yes," Maria said. "Sam Conners, right?"

            "Yep," Sam said. He took a seat across from him. "Thanks for, y'know. Doing this. I'm sorry for intruding on your time." He better be sorry.

            "It's no trouble, really. I'm always happy to help." A lie.

            As Sam began to pull material out of his back pack, she thought to initiate small talk. Having a rapport with him might useful - having a few maggots on your side is always a good thing, her mother once said.

            "You know, I was surprised to hear your name again. I haven't seen you since middle school."

            "Really? But we have music class together. Y'know, fifth period?" Maria reached for a lie in her mind, but she found herself having a hard time producing a good response. Most of her attention in music class was focused on that piano. She hated that goddamn piano.

            "You must go to piano practice, dear," her mother would always say. "Think about all of the men you could impress with the skill of your fingers." She didn't want to impress men, and she sure as hell didn't want to play piano, but for the past ten years she's been suffering through it because there's no talking back to mother. Even at school, she can't escape that damn instrument.

            "Maria?" Sam said. "Sorry, I didn't mean to make things awkward." Maria hadn't even realized she was spacing out.

            "Oh, no, it's fine," Maria said. "I'm sorry, too. I can't believe I never noticed you." To her, every person in her classes were just faces in a crowd, endlessly blending together.

            "Well, anyway," Sam said. He produced the last of his notebooks - Jesus, how many of those things did he have? - from his backpack, formly a disorganized pile of crap on the table. "I've got a few of my tests and papers and stuff here if you wanna take a look."

            "Sure," Maria said. Picking up that first piece of paper - a writing project, by the looks of it - immediately painted a grim reality for the boy. A circled "B-" sat at the top of the page, and Maria saw more comments written in the marginalia on one page than she had ever seen on any of her papers.

            "A B-minus," Maria said.

            "Yeah," Sam said. "That's not bad, I think. But it could be better." _Not bad_ , he says. A B-plus is "not bad". A B-minus is the lowest grade a teacher can give you as long as you actually try - you only enter "not bad" territory at the high Bs. That's what her mother taught her.

            However, as Maria flipped through the pages, it started to become a bit suspect. Sam's grades were certainly lower than hers - a B-minus there, a C here - but they weren't terrible, to the point that it seemed odd he needed tutoring from an honors student.

            "Hey, Sam," Maria said. "Why do you need tutoring?"

            "Well, I don't _need_ tutoring," Sam said. "But I want to do better. I asked for a tutor because I don't wanna be a C student anymore."

            "Hmm," Maria said. What an odd person, getting tutored because he wants to rather than because he was forced to. "Well, let's start with your grammar. First of all, their - T-H-E-I-R - and they're - T-H-E-Y-R-E - aren't interchangeable."

            The lesson went well, all things considered. Sam seemed to have a better grasp on the English language by the end of it, which he had an oddly poor understanding of considering he had spoken it his entire life. His prose was surprisingly good, and he would likely have some A-worthy papers on his hands if he didn't have so many egregious spelling and grammar mistakes. Proof that even a simpleton can do well if they put their mind to it.

            For their next session, Maria decided to go over Sam's math. If there was one word to describe Sam's performance, it would be "inconsistent". Half the time he would get the answer right, and for the other half he would screw up the formula so badly that he would end up with an answer of 52 for a question where the correct answer was 10,687.

            "Ugh," Sam said. "I hate math. It's not like I'm ever gonna have to use it."

            "Don't say that now," Maria said. "You never know what you might end up doing in life."

            "I hope whatever I do is as far away from math as possible."

            Maria quite liked math. There was something to be appreciated about its cold, consistent logic in an everchanging, unpredictable world. Of course, her mother always had the same sort of attitude that Sam did, that math was worthless and she would never need it. Certainly, the caring housewife her mother wanted her to be would never have a use for math.

            "What is it that you would like to do, anyway?" Maria said. "I'm curious."

            "Well, uh," Sam said. "I guess I'd like to do something with art."

            "You're an artist?"

            "Sorta. I haven't really drawn that much since," Sam paused. "Well, uh. Y'know. But I'm trying to get back into it."

            "Follow your dreams, Sam." Hollow advice coming from her. "But you need to get through high school and college first, so you'll need to know math."

            "Yeah, I know," Sam said. "But nobody's got time to figure out polynomials." Well, that much was true. Just as Maria was about to respond, Sam pulled his rumbling phone out of his pocket. "Ah, sorry, gotta take this." He stepped out into the hallway, and Maria was left with a pile of disorganized paper. As she looked over them and saw some of Sam's doodles in the corners, she thought he was actually quite a good artist.

            Sam reentered the room, his expression unchanged from its usual solemn gaze.

            "Sorry," he said. "It was my mom. She's getting taken to the hospital, apparently."

            "Oh," Maria said. She paused, lost for words. "So are you going to be leaving? I don't mind cutting this short."

            "Nah, it's fine," Sam said. He retook his seat and Maria was even more confused. If her mom ended up in the hospital, she would be out of school in an hour, because her dear old mother was injured and needed her trophy daughter to help her farm for as much pity as possible. "She wouldn't want me to head home just cause she got hurt. It'd be a waste of the education she's working so hard to provide for me, y'know?"

            "Huh," Maria said.

            "Ah, sorry, I shouldn't be bringing all this up," Sam said. "Let's get back to the lesson."

            "Okay," Maria said. As she went over slopes, she couldn't shake the feeling that Sam's philosophy was both admirable and confusing at the same time.

            The week after, they were going over social studies. Currently, Sam was studying World War II.

            "What nations were a part of the Axis?" Maria said.

            "Germany, Japan, and Italy." Sam said.

            "And who were the leaders of these nations?"

            "Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussoulini, and, uh... wait, wait, don't give it to me... Hirohito?"

            "Correct. And what was the name of the pact they signed?"

            "Uhh," Sam took on his signature look of confusion, and eventually sighed and shrugged. "I got nothing."

            "You need to remember the small details," Maria said. "You have the bigger picture, but you won't do well if you can't remember the minor parts."

            "It's a lot to remember," Sam said. He slumped down in his chair and sighed. "At least with math, you really just need to memorize formulas. There's so much stuff going on in history that it's impossible to remember it all."

            "I think you just don't have a good system for learning it," Maria said. "Break it down into smaller categories and try to focus on one thing at a time. You could try focusing on one nation and a time and learn their alliances, motivations for joining the war, involvements in major battles, and so on." She was really just talking out of her ass right now, but she had to give the boy _something_.

            "I guess you're right," Sam said. "I think I just don't like social studies because I can't stand the assignments. They're so weird."

            "What do you mean?"

            "Like, last year we had an assignment where we had to take old pictures of immigrants arriving on Ellis Island, and give them captions like they were being posted on Instagram or something with hastags and everything."

            "I guess the teacher wanted to fit in with the kids."

            "Yeah, I bet. Next he'll start dabbing and doing Fortnite dances." Sam chuckled. Maria could've sworn that was the first time she had ever seen him smile.

            "Just endure, Sam," Maria said. "I don't like it either, but you just have to make it through." That wasn't a lie - she couldn't think of anything she would rather do less than reading about dead guys and their stupid wars. Well, except maybe playing piano.

            "I'll try," Sam said. "It'd be easier if we were studying something cool, like, I dunno, samurai."

            "You like samurai?"

            "Yeah, they're awesome. I used to play this game that was all about the Sengoku period in Japan, and it turns out there were some pretty cool things going on back then. You should look up Date Masamune. He kicks ass." Maria was tempted to reprimend him for swearing, but she was too busy being slightly in awe of Sam's childlike honesty. She was used to being surrounded by people who would do things like posting lovey-dovey pictures of them with their partners in Instagram, and then talking shit about them behind their backs the next day. Someone like Sam was an oddity for sure.

            "You can study stuff like that in college," Maria said. "But for now, we're forced to focus on this boring American stuff."

            Sam's history would need a lot of work, but after a few hours, she had at least managed to drill into his head the major factions, their motivations, and a few of the war's most major battles. Maria was concerned when Sam said that he knew what George Washington felt like after he was beaten by Napolean at Pearl Harbor, but he assured her it was just a joke from some cartoon. She wouldn't know. She wasn't allowed to watch cartoons. Only the uncivilized masses waste their brainpower on that stuff, apparently.

            For their fourth session, there was science; the last of the four major subjects. Currently, they were studying chemistry. Maria liked chemistry. Sam, not so much.

            "It's all the memorization of history with all of the math of math," Sam said. "It's like my two least favorite subjects did a fusion dance." Sam made an odd gesture with his hands as he said that. Must be from another one of his cartoons.

            "You just need a good base to start to start with," Maria said. "Get a good grasp of the periodic table and go from there."

            "I'm trying, but it's just so much," Sam said. "Every time I feel like I have a half-decent grasp of what's going on, I see questions on a test and it's like all of the information just shoots out of my brain."

            "Then I'll help you learn," Maria said. "I know this stuff like the back of my hand, so I'll run you through it as many times as it takes."

            "Potassium."

            "What?"

            "Y'know, potassium. That's K. I'm saying 'K'. Get it?" Maria took a second to process it, and then groaned, though she couldn't hide the smile on her face.

            "That's terrible," Maria said.

            "I know," Sam said. "Got you to smile, though."

            "That's true. If being an artist doesn't work out, you have a long career ahead in awful jokes." Oddly, she wasn't resentful of this conversation, much the opposite. It was natural, flowing, she was just saying whatever came to mind instead of having to run everything through her first to make sure she wasn't saying something out of line.

            They went over the periodic table again and again and again; each time, Sam seemed to come out of it with a slightly better understanding, though he still wasn't fully ready.

            "So, do you feel like you have a better grasp on it?" Maria said.

            "Na," Sam said.

            "I get it," Maria said. "Sodium."

            "Dang, guess that's not gonna work on you again," Sam said. "I'll need to find better chemistry jokes." Sam chuckled. Maria found it almost bizarre how cheerful he seemed to be despite the circumstances he was in. If anybody else she knew were dealing with their father dying, barely ever seeing their mother due to how much she works, and declining grades to the point of wanting tutoring, she probably wouldn't ever hear them chuckle again.

            The fifth session was a mix, going over what they had studied so far to ensure Sam hadn't forgotten it. He had lost little bits and bobs, but he knew enough to get by. Maria was proud, of him and herself. She hadn't thought herself much of a teacher, but apparently she was decent at it.

            "Oh hey, Maria," Sam said. He rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a paper. "Check it out. It's one of my English papers." Maria took the paper out of his hands and looked it over. It was an analysis paper on a book they were reading, and the part that stood out the most was in the top right - a circled B+.

            "A B-plus," Maria said. "That's pretty good."

            "Yeah," Sam said. "Thanks a lot for all of your help. Again, I'm really sorry that you got stuck with me."

            "It's no trouble," Maria said. "I'm always happy to help." For once her in her life, she could say that with some amount of sincerity.

           

           

 


End file.
